From Printed to “Wikified” Encyclopedias Sociological Aspects of an Incipient Cultural Revolution

1. Introductory remarks .......................................................................................................................................... 2 2. The new "asymmetric competition" between open source networks and conventional bureaucratic organizations ........................................................................................................................................................... 3 3. The Wikipedia as an encyclopedic project .......................................................................................................... 6 4. “Wikis” as tools for focused and cumulative intellectual productions ............................................................. 10 5. Six Dimensions of WP growth and evolution .................................................................................................... 13 5.1 Worldwide multilingual diffusion .................................................................................................................................. 13 5.2 Staff expansion .............................................................................................................................................................. 14 5.3 Diversification ............................................................................................................................................................... 18 5.4 Elaboration .................................................................................................................................................................... 19 5.5. Increases in internal cohesion ...................................................................................................................................... 21 5.6. External Embedment ................................................................................................................................................... 22 6. On the potentials and limits of wiki-based open source encyclopedias: some preliminary conclusions after six years of experience ............................................................................................................................................... 23 6.1 Free self-recruitment of collaborators .......................................................................................................................... 23 6.2 Extensive and efficient exploitation of intrinsic motivations ........................................................................................ 25 6.3 Low needs for capital and organization ........................................................................................................................ 28 6.4 Multicultural segmentation .......................................................................................................................................... 31 6.5 Flexible polymorphic organization ................................................................................................................................ 33 6.6 Community embedment ............................................................................................................................................... 37 6.7 Keeping pace with current events and discoveries ....................................................................................................... 40 6.8 Changing usage patterns and user roles ....................................................................................................................... 43 6.9 Public visibility of production processes and resilient adaptation ................................................................................ 47 5.10 Unguided incrementalism and unplanned “memetic evolution” ............................................................................... 50 6.11 "WP-Notability" as a new digital divide ...................................................................................................................... 58 7. Conclusive remarks ........................................................................................................................................... 59 References ............................................................................................................................................................ 66 ___________________________________________________________________________________________